"Beer can" grain hoppers

[MStLfan]

Multilpy by 1.609 to get km.

greetings,

Marc Immeker

[tatans]

What's that in kilometres??? and I checked , and there is an Okotoks car! !

[Isambard]

   What is "Alberta Heritage Fund"? 

Alberta has saved billions of dollars in oil and gas royalties and put them in a giant trust fund to be used when the oil and gas run out, if ever. Alberta is also the only Canadian Province that is debt free.

Since Vulcan is on the CP, a Vulcan car should be, or should have been, an ALPX car. 

For trekkie fans, Vulcan is located about 50 miles south east of Calgary as the crow flys. I don't know if they have any Startrek memoribilia - when I was passed through in the '70's the main feature was a Lancaster bomber perched on a pedestal-heritage of a WWII British Commonwealth Air Training base there.

[ottergoose]

Intermountain makes a great version of these cars in N scale - I have a few myself.

http://www.imrcmodels.com/n/nhoppers.htm

[samfp1943]

The main advantage of this design is that the car has no center sill. A common problem with conventional covered hoppers is that the cargo would hang up on the center sill during unloading. The cylindrical unibody design eliminated this problem. These cars are generally made by ACF and for the most part look like regular hoppers with slanted ends. However they are made with the "beer can" design as well. In fact Atlas O makes a nice model of the beer can style.

"The cylindrical unibody design eliminated this problem" Was this not also one of the draw backs to this type of car, the fact that it was capable of being crushed," like a beer can," in an emergency brake application?   I think, I remember seeing a photo posted of one of these cars that was crushed by slack run-in, in a thread on this forum, sometime last year? The photo showed the car crushed to the point that the wheels were touching as an effect of the slack action?   They were a very popular style of car in the '60s and 70's, and then have gradually been replaced by the 'squarer' profiled cars seen more and more now.

[nanaimo73]

   What is "Alberta Heritage Fund"? 

Alberta has saved billions of dollars in oil and gas royalties and put them in a giant trust fund to be used when the oil and gas run out, if ever. Alberta is also the only Canadian Province that is debt free.

Since Vulcan is on the CP, a Vulcan car should be, or should have been, an ALPX car. 

[Murphy Siding]

Here is a link to good site that has quite a list of numbers and names associated with the Alberta Heritage Fund grain cars.

http://www.trainscan.com/data/gc/alxx.html

     Thanks for the link.  That was interesting.  What is "Alberta Heritage Fund"?  Given that the cars seemed to be named after places (in Alberta?), is this a promotional type thing, as a poster above mentioned?

  

[xtrack42]

Here is a link to good site that has quite a list of numbers and names associated with the Alberta Heritage Fund grain cars.

http://www.trainscan.com/data/gc/alxx.html

[Datafever]

I wouldn't be surprised.  I've seen some cars with names and others without.  With a fleet that at one time contained over 1000 cars, they might have run out of names.

Somewhere, I'll bet that someone has a list that ties the numbers and the names together.  That would be an interesting document to get hold of!

Here's another site that lists cars/destinations - with photos:
http://stewart.railfan.net/rail/grainalta.htm

They list a Grimshaw destination, but it isn't the same car photographed previously in this thread by edblysard.

[Datafever]

I wouldn't be surprised.  I've seen some cars with names and others without.  With a fleet that at one time contained over 1000 cars, they might have run out of names.

Somewhere, I'll bet that someone has a list that ties the numbers and the names together.  That would be an interesting document to get hold of!

I doubt that this is an "official" list, but it seems to provide a little of what you were looking for:
http://www.barraclou.com/alberta.html

[Datafever]

The Alberta cars are propaganda vehicles to entice you to visit some of the smaller towns (villages) in Alberta, those strange words are the actual names of the towns. Is Okotoks one of them?????

Yup, sure is.  Okotoks is located a mere 25 miles south of Calgary.

[CShaveRR]

I wouldn't be surprised.  I've seen some cars with names and others without.  With a fleet that at one time contained over 1000 cars, they might have run out of names.

Somewhere, I'll bet that someone has a list that ties the numbers and the names together.  That would be an interesting document to get hold of!

[tatans]

The Alberta cars are propaganda vehicles to entice you to visit some of the smaller towns (villages) in Alberta, those strange words are the actual names of the towns. Is Okotoks one of them?????

[edblysard]

Add in the fact that I couldnt get a side on shot, this one is at a extreme angle...my own train is right behind me, shoving a switch cut in, no way to get to the side of the car and fit it all in one shot, and I had to catch my motor as it comes by.

The other shots are from my switching lead, we are swinging these tracks over to make up a out bound train.

[Murphy Siding]

     Ed:  I see what you mean about the lens compressing the car now.  Look at the window on the engine.  It looks to be only a foot wide.

[Andrew Falconer]

According to freight car books and the Atlas HO and O scale models ACF built Cylindrical Hoppers between 1962-1966. The typical ACF Center Flow Hoppers were introduced in 1965.

The two builders of Canadian Cylindrical Hoppers that I remember are National Steel Car and Marine Industries.

They finally stopped building Cylindrical Hoppers when they could finally engineer New Covered Hoppers similar to the ACF Center Flow Hoppers without patent infringement.

Andrew

[edblysard]

Like Brian said, long lens or zoom lens in this case, it makes the images compress.

Same way you can take a photo of the moon, and  it appears huge, or "real close"  because the lens compresses the foreground and the moon, making them appear closer than in reality.

Shot those today, sorry about the lighting, it has thunderstormed on and off all morning.

We get a bunch of these in, they show up in cycles, a lot of small groups, 10 or 12 cars at a time.

By the way, two G8s on the flats behind the hopper, under the tarps, on meter gauge trucks, headed for South America.

I looked, they have a link and pin coupling system.

[blhanel]

Looks like it only appears shorter because of using a long lens.

[Murphy Siding]

     That's the ones Ed.  What's the deal on that last one?  Is that a baby hopper?  It looks really short.

[edblysard]

Murphy...

How about these?

 

Note the reporting mark Carl mentioned, and the tear drop opening on the end of the last one...interior of the car is about the same shape.

Sorry, Carl, not Vulcan, but Grimshaw?

 

Ed

[elprr]

I am seeing a bunch of these coming through down here in El Paso.  I saw some Alberta ones in addition to this one.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=533070

Ernie

[Murphy Siding]

     Carl-I'm sure you're right about them just saying Canada on them.  I only see a couple dozen if them in a year.  They do make for good advertizing, and for whatever reason, I don't ever remember seeing one with graffitti on it.

[CShaveRR]

Check 'em again, Murph--the fancy ones with the grain on them just say "Canada" on them--those are the Canadian Government-owned cars (reporting marks CNWX or CPWX).

The car Brian shot is apparently the way CN is painting its cars these days--that's the color they use, anyway.  Some also have the CN logo and web address on them.

Brian, we've run a number of unit trains of oats to guess-where in CR, using cars like these, among others.  You should see some of those Canadian (CNWX and CPWX), Alberta (ALNX and ALPX), and Saskatchewan (SKNX and SKPX) cars among them.

Murph, I don't know why--maybe it's a question of pricing.  Never heard of problems with ACF Center Flows, though Thrall had problems with its similar design (such as the CNW 490000-series cars).

[Murphy Siding]

     That's the ones Brian, although I'd have to say the ones I see are usually painted up fancier.  The most common ones say "Canadian National" in big letters, and have a big head of wheat on them.

[blhanel]

You're talking about this model, right?



If so, Quaker Oats here in CR usually has three or four dozen of them parked next to it.  Today I also saw a bunch of them parked on the old passenger spur just east of the Cedar River bridge, evidently waiting to be assembled into an eastbound train (the engines were just up the track, disconnected to avoid fouling a grade crossing).

[Murphy Siding]

Canadian carbuilders stuck with the cylindrical carbodies much longer than ACF did--companies like Marine Industries were building these cars into the 1980s, while the last cylindrical Center Flow was built in the mid- to late 1960s.  These were supplanted by cars with more of an "inverted tear-drop" profile.  Lately the design without a center sill appears to be falling into disfavor, and what you're seeing are cars like the Trinity 5161-cubic-foot car with curved sides and a center sill.  Even ACF's successor is now selling a "Through-sill" car that looks a lot like a Center Flow, but with an obvious difference.

Advantages to the cylindrical design included greater volume for the length of the car, and a profile that allowed better utilization of the space at the top.  The tear-drop shape further refined this.

Besides Alberta, Saskatchewan owns a bunch of the cylindrical grain cars, as does (did?) the Canadian government.  CN's and CP's cylindrical cars were mostly smaller, and have found favor for the transportation of potash (though both railroads are now carrying the potash in bigger cars that used to be used for grain stateside.

     Why would cars without center sills be falling out of favor?  It would seem that a cylendrical car would obtain some extra strenght from it's shape.

[Murphy Siding]

Murphy,

Had one of your Alberta cars down her today...will see if I can get a photo of the rest of the logo for you

     Thsy are neat looking cars.  They are sort of the billboard done right kind of thing.

[CShaveRR]

I wish I knew the number of the one I saw, for the benefit of my Trekkie wife, daughter, son-in-law, brother-in-law, etc.:  It said "Take an Alberta Break--visit Vulcan"!

[edblysard]

Murphy,

Had one of your Alberta cars down her today...will see if I can get a photo of the rest of the logo for you